How a Positive Work Culture Can Help You Thrive in the Tech Industry

Being in the tech industry can quite frankly be brutal.

I’ve been a software engineer for a few years now, and I’ve had more than a few struggles finding the right work environment for me. Looking back, I am grateful for those experiences–each challenge helped me grow not only as an engineer, but also as a person. Nonetheless, it’s important to remember that a person can only lift so much weight continuously and still grow only in the short-term. Any more than that and you’ll be left strained, injured, or burnt-out.

It’s been a year since I’ve started working at Magic, Inc., and my experience has only been amazing! I love working in a fast-paced but flexible environment, along with incredibly skilled, talented, and kind people. Over the past year, I delivered numerous software projects to completion and worked with emerging technologies like Next.js, Vercel, and Supabase.

Recently, I’ve been assigned to trailblaze our machine learning and AI efforts in the engineering front! It’s so cool that I get to revisit my roots with Python while gaining domain knowledge on specialized data tools like JupyterLab and various machine learning libraries. I’m fortunate that my time in UP has given me a really good foundation on AI to confidently take on this new challenge! I’m also super lucky to be collaborating with a seasoned data scientist like Sofia Baria.

At this moment, I can say with certainty that I’m in a good place.

I feel nurtured and appreciated.

I feel trusted as my colleagues encourage me to keep self-managing my projects.

My experiences, skills, and knowledge just keep growing and expanding.

I believe that we’ll always face challenges in any workplace. There will be disagreements and heated discussions, especially when you’re working with passionate people (which is great!).

At the end of the day, it’s the culture and its advocates which will determine whether or not you’ll be able to rise above it and flourish, or drown in toxicity.

I’d like to give my heartfelt thanks to my former manager Daniel Kehoe for setting a high standard for our culture, and to our head of engineering Nic Novak for being a sincere and dependable advocate.